


my soul outside my body

by Areiton



Series: the family we make [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Established Relationship, F/M, Family Feels, Grief/Mourning, Iron Family, M/M, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Protective Pepper Potts, Sibling Bonding, parental Pepper Potts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 16:37:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18664222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: Mama Rhodes told her once, being a parent is living with your soul outside your body.Mama Rhodes was the best mother she'd ever known, and she never questioned that pearl of unasked for wisdom, and every time Tony brought up children, she remembered it.And said no.Then Tony brought home Peter Parker--and everything changed.





	my soul outside my body

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [С душой напоказ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19052497) by [Bat_out_of_hell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bat_out_of_hell/pseuds/Bat_out_of_hell)



> Here have more Tony's family deals with life without him, this time with Pepper Potts. Stay tuned for Harley and Peter.

Mama Rhodes told her once, being a parent is living with your soul outside your body. 

Mama Rhodes was the best mother she'd ever known, and she never questioned that pearl of unasked for wisdom, and every time Tony brought up children, she remembered it. 

And said no. Because she'd lived over a decade with Tony and her heart outside her body, and she didn't think she could handle adding her soul to that. 

Tony whispered to her. Told her she was the strongest person she knew and she  _ knew _ he believed it. 

Sometimes being strong meant knowing your limits. 

Pepper Potts had always known hers. 

Then Tony brought home Peter Parker--and everything changed. 

~*~ 

She didn’t want to love him. 

She  _ wanted _ to hate him, wanted to send him away. Tony didn’t need another distraction, didn’t need  _ more _ dragging him deeper into the world of danger and superheroes and risk. 

Then she met him. She spent a weekend with him when Tony was called away abruptly and she realized--Tony loved him the same way she did--because he couldn’t help but love him. The same way Tony loved Harley--with a kind of irritated helpless fondness that blossomed and deepened into something profound. 

She loved him, and he died. 

Tony came home alone, almost dead, and she held him, poured every bit of herself into putting him back together, and when she knew he was, when she knew he’d survive--survive, survive, never fully  _ recover-- _ she wept. 

She hid herself away and wept for the son she loved without ever wanting to, wept for the boy she lost to some dusty orange tinted planet. 

~*~ 

When she found out she was pregnant, it wasn’t scary. She had already lived with her soul outside her body. 

~*~ 

They stole happiness and they  _ were _ happy, and she never once believed she’d get to keep it. Tony’s eyes were still on the stars--still on the child they lost, even as he cradled the one they had. She knew him, down to her bones. She knew she’d lose him, and the truth was--she never even resented it. 

She loved Tony, loved Morgan, loved Peter. And she’d do anything, to protect the family she loved. 

~*~ 

Peter comes home. 

Tony doesn’t. 

She holds her daughter and cries, quietly so it doesn’t wake her, and she can still smell the battle on her skin, the scent of her armor, and she thinks-- _ this isn’t fair.  _

~*~ 

Tony had two sons. Two boys he adored, two boys who taught him how to be a father, long before Morgan blinked up at him and she thinks--he would be so proud of them. 

She thinks--he didn’t leave us alone. 

~*~ 

Morgan doesn’t understand, really--she doesn’t understand until her first week at school and it’s Peter who holds her, when she sobs, Harley who brings her chocolate milk and sings her to sleep. It’s them who hold her together while Pepper huddles in Rhodey’s arms and cries for the man they all loved. 

“He should be here,” she whispers. “Rhodey--” 

“I know, sweetheart,” he murmurs. Holds her close, tight, the way no one but Tony ever did, and she cries until her head aches. 

~*~ 

They tell her stories--Peter and Harley. They dote on their sister, spoil her, and they turn bedtime from princesses and brilliant scientists and fairy tales to this--stories about their father. 

Stories about the life he led and the way he saved them. 

Sometimes she sits with them, Morgan curled in her arms sleepily. Sometimes, FRI eavesdrops for her, and she listens over her endless paperwork. Sometimes she sits in the hallway and listens, her eyes closed and a smile on her lips as Morgan giggles and the boys take turns. 

She learns about him, this man she loves, and she learns about them, these sons he gave her. 

About Tony’s inability to pick Peter up without feeding him, and Harley’s first garage, about the first time Peter met Tony--she wonders if he ever realized how close he came to losing the boy before they even knew him--and how Harley helped Tony get the help he needed when she couldn’t. 

She picks them apart, these stories and memories and hoards them close, a dragon guarding treasure and thanks all the gods, that she has this. 

~*~ 

“He rewrote his will, after she was born,” Pepper says one night. Peter is dozing against Harley’s shoulder and she’s watching them carefully--they don’t talk about this thing between them, but she sees it, in moments like this, when they’re all soft and tired and vulnerable. “His lawyers made him remove you--you were both lost in the Decimation, and it just--he hated it, but it made  _ sense.”  _

Peter is awake now, and Harley is frowning at her. “Neither of us care about that,” he says, and she nods, because she knows that. 

Of course she knows that. 

They’re his sons, the ones  _ he _ chose, and they’d never once care about what they got from it. But--”He’d care,” she says, and slides two envelopes across the table. “When you’re ready for it,” she says, softly. “He changed the will--but he never stopped believing you’d both come home. Neither of us did.” 

She kisses Peter’s hair and squeezes Harley’s shoulder and dims the lights, “Go to sleep soon, boys. Your sister gets up early on holidays.” 

~*~ 

Harley comes to her before he asks. 

He’s anxious, and he pours her a drink, before he sits across from her. “You know I love him,” he says and she sits back in her chair, because she knows, suddenly, what this is. 

“I know--we’re family,” he says, abruptly, his accent going thick and heavy like it does when he’s nervous. “But we’re family we  _ chose.  _ And I  _ love  _ him.” 

“Harley,” she says, gently. 

“Peter is yours. I know--I know how it was, before the Decimation. He was your son. And I wanna do this right.” 

She stands up and goes to him, draws him up and hugs him tight, until he isn’t trembling against her, and she wishes, like she has so many times, like she thinks she always will, that Tony were here. 

“Honey, you are  _ both  _ mine,” she whispers, and for the first time since the funeral--her boy cries. 

~*~ 

Tony’s ring gleams on Peter’s finger and he cries, when Harley slips it on, and she knows--it’s bittersweet and beautiful and she thinks,  _ you would be so proud of them.  _

~*~ 

She never wanted to be a mother. 

She knows her limits and she knew--living with her heart outside her body was what she could do. 

Living with her soul outside her body would break her. 

But when her heart shattered, and went still--her soul wrapped around her, held her up, held each other. They grieved with her and for her and let her grieve while they held her baby. 

Sometimes she looks at them and thinks,  _ you would be so proud of them, and the men they have become.  _

Mostly, she looks at them--at Harley’s lanky dirty blonde beauty grease-stained like Tony, at Peter’s quick, sweet smile and ancient eyes that remind her of the weight in his father’s, at Morgan with her brilliant mind and sassy smile and dry humor and she sees the man they loved, the father they share and she is  _ grateful. _

They were his. 

And they are  _ hers. _

She never wanted to be a mother. 

But her soul lives outside her body, in three impossibly brilliant people and she thinks, for everything they have lost, for every price they have paid--they were worth it. 

 


End file.
